Marketing pharmaceuticals

"Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars annually to ensure that physicians most susceptible to marketing prescribe the most expensive, most promoted drugs to the most people possible. The foundation of this influence is a sales force of 100,000 drug reps that provides rationed doses of samples, gifts, services, and flattery to a subset of physicians. "

http://medicine.plos...al.pmed.0040150

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in AmericaI

Between 1987 and 2007 the number of Americans disabled due to mental illness more than doubled despite a whopping $40 billion annual psychotropic drug tab.

It was believed that psychopharmaceuticals were magic bullets, knocking mental illness out of the game, returning formerly disabled people to the ranks of productive citizens. But a deeper prob into clinical studies in prestigious scientific journals, some dating back more than 50 years, revealed a shocking anomaly.

Psychiatric drugs have repeatedly been shown to worsen mental illness, to say nothing of the risks of liver damage, weight gain, elevated cholesterol and blood sugar, and reduced cognitive function they entail. The reality is that, because no one knows what causes mental illness, there’s no cure or palliation to be found in these pills.


http://www.amazon.co... of an epidemic

Medicine is going backwards overall - especially psychiatry - due to gross over-prescription of ineffective, unnecessary, harmful and dangerous drugs that ought to be used rarely (if at all) - supported by an ocean of pseudo-scientific research of extreme and calculated dishonesty.

 

 

Dr. Healy explains how prescription drugs can lead to school shootings

 

About 90 per cent of school shooters in North America and Europe were being treated with a prescription drug, according to Dr. Healy, usually an antidepressant or mood stabilizer.

 

For as many as one in five people, these drugs can “make you more anxious and more agitated.” This includes developing thoughts of harming yourself or others.

 

 

 

http://rxisk.org/rxi...hool-shootings/

Big Pharma - Soaring sales based on soaring prices

 

Prices charged by manufacturers of pharmaceutical products jumped 9.8% in May from a year ago.

 

 

How do drugmakers get the power to raise prices like this, in a sluggish economy? 

 

The US health-care system, backed by patent laws, has consistently stifled competition. It encourages the formation of monopolistic structures via Big-Pharma takeovers funded by cheap credit and booming financial markets,

 

Consumers of those drugs often doesn’t pay for them directly -  third parties, like insurance companies and state and federal agencies, pay for them.

 

Insurance companies have trouble saying no to consumers who need the drugs. In turn, they’re not in a strong negotiating position with the drugmakers. So they haggle over price the best they can, and then turn around and increase their premiums.

 

Drugmakers have figured this out. They’re in nirvana. They know they can get away with this in the US, though perhaps not in other countries.

 

Congress has steadfastly refused to take on this issue thanks to the lobbying power of the pharmaceutical industry. 

 

 

http://wolfstreet.co...rice-increases/

 

EpiPen Scandal Is Yet Another Sign of Coming Pharma Crisis

 

Immigration is about to be replaced with an angry debate on soaring health care costs.

 

Valeant, Turing, Theranos and Mylan show the fallout of epic greed. The victim? American consumers

 

 In the housing crisis, voters were underwater homeowners; today they are price-wary health care consumers. With wage growth anemic, Washington has no incentive to support high drug prices and every incentive to cut them aggressively. And yet the pharmaceutical industry remains mulish. If Wall Street was tone-deaf to the plight of Main Street during the housing crisis, the pharmaceutical industry may lack ears altogether.

 

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the health care industry spent more than $509.8 million to lobby Washington in 2015. Which means a backlash is inevitable: I would not underestimate how far Washington will go in dog piling on drug companies with scrutiny and angry criticism in an effort to save face and restore confidence with voters.

 

Wall Street bankers were Washington pariahs in 2008, but wait until you see the treatment of drug-company executives and lobbyists.

 

 

 

http://time.com/4475...eutical-crisis/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EpiPen Scandal Is Yet Another Sign of Coming Pharma Crisis

 

Immigration is about to be replaced with an angry debate on soaring health care costs.

 

Valeant, Turing, Theranos and Mylan show the fallout of epic greed. The victim? American consumers

 

 In the housing crisis, voters were underwater homeowners; today they are price-wary health care consumers. With wage growth anemic, Washington has no incentive to support high drug prices and every incentive to cut them aggressively. And yet the pharmaceutical industry remains mulish. If Wall Street was tone-deaf to the plight of Main Street during the housing crisis, the pharmaceutical industry may lack ears altogether.

 

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the health care industry spent more than $509.8 million to lobby Washington in 2015. Which means a backlash is inevitable: I would not underestimate how far Washington will go in dog piling on drug companies with scrutiny and angry criticism in an effort to save face and restore confidence with voters.

 

Wall Street bankers were Washington pariahs in 2008, but wait until you see the treatment of drug-company executives and lobbyists.

 

 

 

http://time.com/4475...eutical-crisis/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No kidding. The proverbial is about to hit the fan.  The tweet that slapped a sector and she's not even in office yet:

 

 

 

Fraud, Exploitation and Collusion: America's Pharmaceutical Industry

 

The pharmaceutical industry is a crony-capitalist cartel that buys whatever political influence it requires to maintain its power and profits. Isn't it obvious? Or have we become so distracted and drugged that we no longer care? 
 

America's Pharmaceutical industry takes pride of place in this week's theme of The Rot Within, as the industry has raised fraud, exploitation and collusion to systemic perfection.

 

What other industry can routinely kill hundreds of thousands of Americans and suffer no blowback? Only recently has the toll of needless deaths from the opioid pandemic finally roused a comatose corporate media and bought-and-paid-for, see-no-evil Congress to wonder if maybe there should be some limits placed on Big Pharma and its drug distributors.

The Drug Industry's Triumph Over the DEA (WaPo)

Explosive '60 Minutes' investigation finds Congress and drug companies worked to cripple DEA's ability to fight opioid abuse

 

What other industry can raise prices any time it wants because, well, it can? Longtime correspondent/physician J.F. recently submitted a chart of medication price increases (below)--nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual because we can price increases. 

 

What other industry has such complete control over the federal government? Dr. J.F. reminded me that the law enacting Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage specifically prohibits the U.S. government from negotiating lower prices on the immense volume of medications it purchases through Medicare (not to mention the Medicaid and Veterans Administration programs). 

 

 http://www.oftwomind...fraud10-17.html

  

Money Makes the World Go Around   https://www.lewrockw...ling-the-shots/

 

One of the most politically powerful public-private partnerships in the world today is the lucrative one that has been forged by the pharmaceutical industry with government, mainstream media and wealthy philanthropic foundations with political agendas

 

Gardasil - Vaccine from Hell   https://www.lewrockw...rdasil-vaccine/

 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—“Many of the things I’m going to say today would be slanderous if they weren’t true. But Merck won’t sue me. They won’t do that because in the United States, truth is an absolute defense against slander.”  

 

176 drugs proven "safe and effective" have been removed from the market because they are dangerous.  Some were marketed for decades.

 

58% of studied drugs did not show any added benefit

While Doctors receive direct payments for prescribing them.

According to the study performed at the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, more than half of the new drugs entering the German healthcare system show absolutely no added benefit.
A whopping 58% of studied drugs did not show any added benefit over standard patient care.

A study on cancer drugs conducted between 2009 and 2013 that found most of the drugs had been approved with little evidence of any benefits to cancer patients quality of life or survival chances. After following up on the cancer drugs’ success rates, researchers found minimal additional evidence of the drugs’ effectiveness.

Even when a drug is found to be ineffective, global regulators do little to punish offending drug manufacturers.

The entire way these drugs are priced and incentivized needs to be overhauled as well; right now vague and unclear results are being rewarded with monetary gain, whereas real tangible results should be the only final outcome that produces profit.